Daily Brief

Even before receiving a frosty reception on Capitol Hill this week when they asked Congress for $25 billion in government aid, Detroit executives expressed a willingness to give up some of their sacred cows (if not yet their private jets).

General Motors, for instance, said it would not advertise on the Super Bowl in February -- a major concession, considering that it's been one of the three biggest advertisers on the N.F.L. championship game over the last two decades years.

What if that's not enough in these trying times? What if G.M --...

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Who will take over Citi?

As John Carney notes today, Citigroup's market capitalization is $21 billion; that of Goldman Sachs is $20 billion. Can anyone say "merger of equals"? Nothing's unthinkable in this market, not even the idea that you can tie two rocks together and hope that they float. Reportedly Lloyd Blankfein approached Vikram Pandit with a merger proposal in September, and was rebuffed; now, however, the matter is out of Pandit's hands, and Citi's board might be more amenable to such a suggestion.

A Citi-Goldman merger would give Citigroup much more credible management, assuming that the Goldman...

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Cleggy calls for exit from the EU!

No, really, Nick Clegg calls this morning for the UK to leave the European Union. No, I'm not making this up either. It's really rather an odd thing for the europhile leader of a near federast party to argue for but there it is.

That means taxing capital gains as income, harmonising pension tax relief and stopping big companies from taking operations offshore to avoid tax.

It's that companies going offshore thing which is the problem. The EU guarantees, insists upon, the free movement of goods, labour and capital. Its also made very clear in court rulings that the...

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Somewhat shaming...

...to find myself agreeing with Larry Elliott here.

There are many reasons to be afraid - very afraid - about the state of the world, but a sterling crisis is not one of them.

I quite agree, but what sort of sterling crisis are we talking about?

This is the crisis with just about everything. Failing banks, the drying up of credit, crashing house prices, rising unemployment, weakening growth and - as the official figures showed yesterday - a ballooning budget deficit. Students of economic crises will detect only one thing is missing from this litany...

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Jam today, jam tomorrow but never jam again

This morning’s FT lays out just how bad a state the public finances are in:

“Annual public borrowing is set to rocket towards £120bn over the next two years – far higher than City forecasts – forcing Alistair Darling to announce plans for deferred tax rises and public spending curbs when he presents his pre-Budget report next week.
...
The consensus forecast is for borrowing to hit 6 per cent of national income, or £90bn, next financial year, but the Treasury expects the rate of deterioration to continue apace,

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